


Metonymy

by someinstant



Series: Reluctant Poet [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-26
Updated: 2011-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-15 23:12:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someinstant/pseuds/someinstant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a few sessions of staring out the window and biting his lip and waving his hand and saying, "Look, it was--," and nothing else, Kate tells him to try writing it down instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metonymy

The thing of it is: John secretly hates poetry. He has no idea why Donne thought writing about old pottery was so damn important, thinks Byron was a sick fuck (seriously, his half- _sister_?), and wishes Bukowski had either drunk a lot more or a lot less-- whichever would have kept him from writing such miserable stuff. But after everything went down-- including the helicopter, John, three friends, his eyesight, and his flight status-- Kate gives him an assignment.

"You're right," she had said, frustrated and red-faced, just like John, "I don't understand what it was like. So _tell_ me."

And he had tried, he really had. But how do you sit in front of someone, a _good_ person, a _kind_ person, and open your mouth and say, _I shot a boy in the street, once,_ or _I'm pretty sure they were armed, maybe,_ or _We were churches, burning_?

After a few sessions of staring out the window and biting his lip and waving his hand and saying, "Look, it was--," and nothing else, Kate tells him to try writing it down instead.

So on the way home he goes and buys one of those composition books from an office supply store, the same black and white kind he had in seventh grade when he had to keep a journal about the books he read all year ( _The Outsiders_ was his favorite), and he writes his name and phone number on the inside cover in black ink. Then he tosses it in the backseat of his car and goes for a run instead.

A couple days later, he's frozen on his doorstep, watching a line of black ants marching resolutely across the flagstone, completely oblivious to the fact that he's about to drop five hundred pounds of fucking hellfire onto their orderly lives. When he's stopped throwing up in the bushes, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and goes and writes a few aborted phrases about distance and intent and objectives the color of smoke. By the following Monday, he's got a book full of jigsaw pieces-- some of them skirt the edges of things ( _he did, and I did, but we weren't_ ), and some are more precise ( _opened like a red mouth, coughing up everything hot and vital_ ), and some have nothing at all to do with this particular puzzle ( _a sea view, a sky view, a silver-armed city_ )-- and he's stopped feeling like a bottle choking on its cork.

"This is," says Kate, "this is-- _John_ ," and he's nervous and jittery and he _hates_ the idea of her reading what he wrote, except for how he doesn't, and how he needs to know that she thinks it doesn't suck.

"It's not really what you asked for," he says, shrugging. "I just. I don't really do journals," he says.

"So I see," Kate says, and she's shaking her head and smiling a little. "But apparently you do poetry. Well. Who knew?"

"Who knew," agrees John, adjusting his glasses and grinning.

**Author's Note:**

> So I'd been thinking (as one does), about how I have a Thing for men in wire-rimmed glasses, and then I thought, _God, John Sheppard would be totally hot in glasses_ , which I think we all can agree is a Great Truth. _But self_ , I thought, _if Sheppard had glasses, then the Air Force wouldn't let him fly! And that would be tragic and sad!_ (Which is, I think, another Great Truth.) _In fact_ , I continued thinking, _it would be so_ very _tragic and sad, I bet Sheppard would start writing angsty poetry about it_.
> 
> And that seems like it might also be a Great Truth. But then I stopped being sarcastic somewhere along the road, and this is what happened.


End file.
